Family portrait fun

    Moving oil paint around on a canvas is fun. I decided a family portrait would be next. I put Joe driving his sport car facilitating our lives. The grandchildren are on the trunk watching a roadrunner. A southwestern landscape is on my mind because of a reunion I want to attend. I am painting with Farley beside me, wind blowing his ears. David is hanging on to Emmit, his Pug. What to do about the parents and uncles? I decided to pilfer angels from art history, to create guardian angels...not specific persons, but symbols. The license plate notes initials and ages. The flowers have meanings and refer to largesse bestowed. I started out with a toned canvas and added color. Click the photos to enlarge.

    

      Every time the Boston Marathon rolls around, Hannah is another year older. There was her soft quilted birthday card to make and the hard copy for clarity. I always think of Hannah as our prolific reader, so this year I grabbed a literary Paddington (we saw the movie) and added some of my favorite quotations about reading. I hope to stitch better next year. The batting dragged under the needle and I was running out of time.  

       In the spring,  Katie rounds up friends to make blocks for Project Hope, so I whipped up nine. I didn't have enough printed squares, so I took images from the novelty fabrics I did have and painted the blank areas with a Sharpie Rub a Dub laundry marker that doesn't bleed and Jacquard acrylic fabric paints that leave the fabric soft.  The four bottom left blocks were embellished this way.

       While I paint, Joe insists on building frames. All in the family portrait think he is a special guy to have around!

Self Portrait as Crab: another quilting technique

    The Quilters' Connection has free winter workshops. I signed up to take Gladys' impressionistic quilting based on Susan Carlson's book, Serendipity Quilts. I own the book, but had never tried quilting by drawing a picture, gluing tiny bits of my fabric scraps to fill in the subject and free motion quilting atop. I didn't get far...just the crab. I cut it out and quilted it to a sandy looking fabric. Actually, I added a piece of tulle to the top to blend the colors and give extra hold to the teeny fabric pieces. I am still embellishing it, trying to save! This was all fun to do even though I made a zillion mistakes.

    I drew the object, freehand from a photo, onto 14" x 14" muslin using a Sharpie Rub a Dub marker. I grabbed groups of fabric scraps from the drawer where I keep them and gathered them in piles, rainbow pattern. I used Aleene's Tacky glue and a wooden pointed stick to apply the glue to the center of the scraps. Other people like glue sticks in order for ease in shifting the fabric pieces.

     As a present for the teachers, I turned little tins found at Michael's into mini portable hand sewing kits for carrying handwork around the house...magnets in the top for needles and pins, batting in the bottom so beads won't roll away.  The teachers had to add their own small scissors and a bobbin of thread for sewing to my present. Click to enlarge photos. Visit Susan's book at Amazon to read about the technique in more detail.

Friday Fun: back to painting

click to enlarge if you dare

   Yesterday I got my eyelid stitches out (too much sun as a child);  and today I decided to make a journal quilt with myself as pirate. I had to paint myself on fabric, but I haven't depicted myself in a long time, I am so easily distracted and excited by contemporary happenings in the quilt world.

    With a fresh eye, I realized if you paint yourself, looking in a mirror, your fabric should be at the same angle as the mirror, on an easel or equivalent. My canvas was on the table so I looked as if I had mumps. Using Lumiere acrylic jpaints, I grabbed the opague white to mix in with the other colors to narrow my face but I still look like a chipmunk. Also, I hopelessly bouffant my hair. I started out w a Sharpie Rub a Dub pen and sketched on the fabric a couple of noses and lips and chins. They may show through in the future. I have made so many self portraits in the past, I was not humble enough to make preliminary sketches and it shows.  In the end, I was so glad to be rid of the patch, I left it off! And I had a lot of fun painting, regardless the results!
     Now off to make the quilt, maybe with a patch that lifts up.